American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Sir,
The depths of your Executive Private Office (bathroom) knows no bounds, an excellent treatise I don't doubt. Intrigued to read further.

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Karl McEntegart
Brigadier General
Officer Commanding
Army of Tennessee





Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

How does he arrive at the rating? What are the factors?

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
Army of Northern Virginia

I wouldn't rate Joseph Johnston that high. Don't blame him for his defensive tactics in the Atlanta campaign or fault him during the Peninsula Campaign, but I believe his handling of the Vicksburg Campaign was negligent. True, he advised Pemberton to abandon Vicksburg, but he should have relocated to Vicksburg sooner, after the Union fleet ran the guns. Instead, he stayed with Bragg's army,
which didn't need him at the time. I remember Johnston sent a bunch of railroad rolling stock to northern Mississippi, where it was later trapped and destroyed. Anyway, there is a reason offensive is a principle of war and defense isn't. Can't think of a single Johnston offensive campaign during the war.

https://www.amazon.com/Destroyer-Iron-H ... 0873384237

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

1 Star = A losing commander
2 Stars = A competent commander
3 Stars = A winning commander
4 Stars = A standout commander

He likely uses the same factors any other historians would - performance, results, and effectiveness.

Based on that scale then, Johnston deserves the rating. He was competent but he didn't win very much. Aside from Bull Run and Kennesaw Mountain he usually retreated rather than engaged the enemy. Fair Oaks was an abysmally fought battle as well.

And, unlike Mike above, I didn't even factor in Vicksburg to all this. Good point, Mike. Does Johnston's "success" with the Army of Tennessee NOT being crushed by Sherman count as making up for Vicksburg's loss? His soldiers surely loved him and believed him to be a great commander. The polar opposite was Hood who wrecked them in just a few months.

I knew Johnston's rating would get a few comments

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

IMHO one of the very best. A great tactician. He stood bareheaded in the rain at Sherman's funersl to pay honor to his classmate. Then contracted pneumonia and died about a month later.

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Jim Gleason LTG
LTG 3-3-II AoP

I believe Johnston fought defensively well but never knew when to pull the trigger and attack the enemy. He was a one trick pony. It kept him from losing on the field of battle but also kept him from winning decisively.

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Maj. Gen. Mitch Johnson
ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE COMMANDER

George McClellan

Extraordinarily intelligent, number two in his West Point class, universally praised as a brilliant organizer, beloved by his troops, and impressive to the public, George B. McClellan was nevertheless unsuited to large-unit combat command. Personally courageous, he was nevertheless chronically and pathologically inclined to magnify the challenges and obstacles he faced, to believe that those above him wished to see him fail, and, most of all, to wildly overestimate the strength of the enemy. These psychological defects prevented him from committing his troops to battle in a timely manner, which repeatedly resulted in tragically missed opportunities for decisive victories that would likely have shortened if not ended the Civil War before the close of its second year. A talented, earnest, humane officer, McClellan, evaluated in terms of the results he produced and did not produce, was the single most notable failure among the Union’s high command.

HISTORIANS RATING: ONE STAR[/size]


Agreed. His organizational skills were fantastic, and he looked the part of a general. His men also worshipped him. But McClellan was his own worst enemy. The list of his failures is too long to go through. He was simply not meant to be a field general.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Robert E. Lee

Perhaps no general in any army at any time has been more universally admired than Robert E. Lee. His character commanded the devotion of his men as well as the people of the South (who, for the most part, idolized him) and won the ungrudging respect of his Union opponents. His ability to hold together the Army of Northern Virginia under conditions of crushing hardship was nearly miraculous. He possessed the topographical understanding of the brilliant engineer that he was; few commanders have so completely grasped the concept of what modern soldiers call battlespace. His approach to tactical problems was innovative and often daring, as when he deliberately divided his forces in the face of the enemy at the Second Battle of Bull Run and at Chancellorsville. His “big picture” concept of the appropriate Confederate strategy was persuasive, though ultimately unsuccessful. He believed that the North had to be dealt a series of quick, aggressive offensive blows to break its will to fight and force its leaders to negotiate a peace favorable to the Confederacy. Lee was a commander of great personal courage, who also had an uncanny facility for seeing the battle from his adversary’s point of view.

Yet he was far from being the perfect general. His policy of offense, of offering battle at every opportunity, led to his sacrificing the very real advantages of fighting a defensive war on “home soil.” Even more critical was the deep flaw in his command style. Without doubt, Lee possessed compelling “command presence,” but his habit of couching in the consultative language of gentleman soldiers what should have been emphatic, direct, and absolute orders to subordinates sometimes led to a breakdown in coordination among the elements of his Army of Northern Virginia. At Gettysburg, the results of this command style were notoriously catastrophic. Lee seems often to have lacked the energy as well as the willingness to ride herd on his subordinates and to ensure the proper, prompt, and complete execution of his orders. For this, he and his army sometimes paid a heavy price.

Finally, speed and maximum aggression were the hallmarks of Lee’s strategy and tactics, and the foundation of his battlefield success. These, however, requires a willingness to spend lives. Ultimately, Lee was unable to produce with this bloody prodigality the results he wanted – and the Confederacy needed – before he had bled the army white. When Ulysses S. Grant turned the Civil War into a contest of attrition, Lee and his forces were doomed.

In the end, perhaps Robert E. Lee’s greatest contribution to the Civil War was the aura of nobility and honor he generated about himself. Thanks in large part to him, the Civil War definitively ended rather than petered out in the bitter “Bleeding Kansas”-style violence of a prolonged guerilla resistance. Lee showed his men how to win battles, but, in final defeat, he also showed them how to surrender with a dignity and a humanity that contributed to the healing of the nation.


HISTORIANS RATING: THREE AND A HALF STARS



As much as I think Lee deserves four stars... I think he falls just short. If I have one battle and the fate of my existence is riding on the outcome then, of course, Lee is at the head of the army. But his big picture failings are undeniable, and his command style did lack determination at some critical junctures during the war. But on the whole, he is the finest army commander of the war.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Lee should be 4 stars. As a field general there are few better in history than Lee. Tactically Lee was superior to any other general in the war for my money. No general was perfect but Lee was as close as could be expected given the odds and logistics against him.

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Maj. Gen. Steve Griffith


Army of Northern Virginia Commander

Robert Edwad Lee - Tha finest man whatevah sucked a breath of air!

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Brigadier General Denny Holt
5th Bde, 2nd Div, II Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

Lee lost the war. You can't expect a perfect score when you're on the losing team. Had he been more conservative in tactics and strategy he may have bled the north more before the 64 election. He wrecked his own army over time. Grant understood logistics that Lee didn't.

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Maj. Gen. Mitch Johnson
ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE COMMANDER